


A Night So Black (That The Darkness Hummed)

by joidianne4eva



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Lovecraftian, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 08:20:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4997581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joidianne4eva/pseuds/joidianne4eva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Rodney met it, he was seven and his babysitter had come up with the stupid idea of sticking him in front of a Fantastic Four rerun. Rodney spent the first ten minutes of the movie dissecting Reed Richards’ theory of interdimensional travel, he’d spent the rest of the time correcting the math and the theory until he had something that was almost workable…not perfect but he had been seven at the time so Rodney couldn’t fault himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Night So Black (That The Darkness Hummed)

**Author's Note:**

> For the Monster Fest on ushobwri. The prompt - Lovecraftian.
> 
> Huge thanks to darkmoore and Cougars_catnip for the read through!

The first time Rodney met it, he was seven and his babysitter had come up with the stupid idea of sticking him in front of a Fantastic Four rerun. Rodney spent the first ten minutes of the movie dissecting Reed Richards’ theory of interdimensional travel, he’d spent the rest of the time correcting the math and the theory until he had something that was almost workable…not perfect but he _had_ been seven at the time so Rodney couldn’t fault himself.

The thing was, it did work…to a point.

His machine had taken him almost six months to complete and while it did open what could be classed as a portal he hadn’t thought about the specifics, like a where.

The thing he remembered most wasn’t the feeling of accomplishment but the bone deep terror that clawed its way up his spine when the darkness _moved,_ sending images hurtling through Rodney’s mind that had tears streaming down his face as his fingers scrambled at the machine to turn it _off_!

That was the first time he’d met It, a being that couldn’t be described in human tongue, something that shouldn’t have existed…something that couldn’t exist anywhere except the between spaces. The places where all of Rodney’s theories were nothing but child’s play, rules that could be twisted and recreated in the blink of an eye.

He destroyed the machine but he’d forgotten something important.

A door was still a door even if it was shut from one side.

*O*

Rodney was ten when it found him again.

One moment he’d been trying to get away from the Neanderthals he had the misfortune of calling his classmates and the next moment he’d been falling through nothing, surrounded by a darkness so thick that he could feel it on his skin.

It didn’t have a name; Rodney understood that as it slithered into his mind, shaping his thoughts like a young child playing with clay. It didn’t understand the importance of names and when Rodney tried to explain it made a sound like mountains crumbling.

It wasn’t until he was eleven that Rodney found out that it had been laughing.

The knowledge didn’t make him feel any better.

*O*

After that it never truly left, even in the moments when Rodney couldn’t see it, he could feel it, lingering at the corner of his mind as he learned everything he could and it learned with him, soaking up the knowledge like a sponge.

Rodney didn’t have friends, he didn’t really need them and he didn’t want them around not when it was already there, feeding him theories and ideas that made Rodney’s head hurt as his mind tried to keep up.

Rodney got the sense that it was amused by him, but there was something else there, some dark sense of pleasure that resonated through his being whenever he pleased it, almost like a reward.

It didn’t like or understand the other humans around Rodney, that much was pretty obvious the first time it stole the air out of the lungs of a lecturer when he tried to tell Rodney that the idea that he’d spent three weeks perfecting was wrong.

The Professor had gasped, fingers clawing at his throat as his eyes rolled back and Rodney had just watched because there wasn’t anything else that he could do…nothing that it would let him do.

The theory hadn’t been wrong, Professor Sloan didn’t know it but Rodney did because it had been pleased for hours after Rodney had finished the math. Before Rodney had been angry that it wouldn’t just tell him what he needed to know but he’d figured out that it wasn’t about the knowledge, it was about how Rodney understood the things he was discovering because as Rodney learned more about everything, it learned more about Rodney.

It killed Professor Sloan five times, each time bringing the man back a little bit slower and Rodney wondered if it would get bored soon…wondered how he would explain what had happened if it did.

In the end the Professor had stopped, mid-choke for the sixth time, then turned and scribbled Rodney’s grade on his paper before leaving the room.

Later that night it had whispered that it was always bored, that none of the other humans were worth its attention because they weren’t Rodney and Rodney didn’t know if his shivers were from pleasure or fear.

*O*

When they’d woken the Wraith, Rodney had been terrified…not for his own life but because of It. Everything else in the Pegasus Galaxy was explainable but the Wraith were something else...something _other_ and Rodney was so certain that it would leave because of them because they were something closer to what it could call kin, something so alien that the human mind shied away from their very existence, but it didn’t.

Rodney had been the only one to see the way that its skin sagged and bulged, human physique pushed to the very edge by the creature that it housed.

None of the others had seen the darkness in its eyes; eternity coalesced into pinpricks that could swallow them whole.

When it came to him that night, fingertips pressed against every inch of his body as it twisted itself around him, limbs flowing under and over Rodney until he felt smothered like it was trying to absorb him into itself, Rodney hadn’t understood. He’d thought that it had needed grounding, needed something to remind itself of what it couldn’t have…he’d been wrong.

“They can’t have you,” it whispered, in a voice that screamed in the silence, that threatened to burst Rodney’s eardrums but he still clung to the words because they were the first that it had given him that came close to explaining why it stayed.

It wouldn’t save the rest of the expedition, wouldn’t eradicate the Wraith but it wouldn’t let Rodney die and Rodney wouldn’t let the others die and that was enough.

*O*

“Give him back.”

Ronon’s words were snarled from between clenched teeth and Rodney could hear Teyla demanding the same but he didn’t speak, he kept his eyes glued to the bleeding wall that Sheppard had vanished behind, his gun held loosely in his hand.

The priestess bowed her head, fingers clenched to hide the shaking of her hands as Ronon pressed his gun to her head.

“Bring him back now!” Ronon ordered and the priestess made a high pitched sound like wounded animal as another stepped forward, hands raised towards Teyla.

“We didn’t know, I swear it, we thought it would give him the power to help us. You must believe us, it only killed those unworthy,” she pleaded and Rodney snorted, the sound echoing through the clearing as he kept his eyes glued to the blood staining the walls that had sucked Sheppard in…blood that was quickly vanishing.

Raising his eyes he smiled at the crying priestess, “You wanted a God?” he asked as something cold brushed against his cheek but it wasn’t truly cold, his body just didn’t know how to interpret the heat of the being touching it...John had explained it once but Rodney hadn’t really been listening.

Ronon and Teyla crumpled and Rodney was glad for that because John had said he liked them but Rodney was never sure.

The priestesses and the villagers were staring at the thing behind him but Rodney didn’t turn, didn’t even try because he knew that not even his mind would be able to bend enough to accept the enormity of what It was…of what John was.

“You wanted a God?” he asked again, watching detachedly as several of them collapsed blood streaming from their eyes…they were the lucky ones.

Rodney bared his teeth in something that could almost be described as a smile as he met the eyes of the priestess who had directed John to touch the wall. “You should have been specific when you were asking for your God. I don’t think you’ll like this one.”

The sound that it made then was blanketed, broken and smoothed into something that wouldn’t shatter Rodney’s mind into pieces but he heard the screams, felt its glee as it rushed over the planet, swallowing it whole and then Rodney hung, suspended forever and for only a moment, in the nothingness of its being before they were being hurtled through the gate.

People flooded around their team while Carson shouted questions and for a second Rodney met John’s eyes and he smiled even as his heart thundered in his chest.

There were no words to describe John Sheppard, nothing that could truly encompass the enormity of what he truly was and Rodney’s mind shied away from his existence even as it reached for him because in those moments when the darkness had moved, when a seven year old Rodney had stood at the edge of the abyss staring at a horror that could not be named it had made him a promise…it had promised that they would be legends and John Sheppard… _It_ never lied…not to Rodney.

 


End file.
